Broadcast

A Class Apart tells the little known story of how a band of underdog Mexican-American lawyers take their case, Hernandez v. Texas, all the way to the Supreme Court and win the first decision to begin dismantling Jim Crow – issued two weeks before Brown v. Board of Education. This one-hour historical documentary is more than the story of a case – it’s the story of a people. It will use the Hernandez case as a through-line to shed light on the under-reported history of systematic discrimination faced by Mexican-Americans in the Southwest, their early civil rights struggle, and to explore cutting-edge issues of racial politics and identity among Latinos.

Antonia Pantoja: Abriendo Camino tells the story of educator/organizer Antonia Pantoja’s leadership to work with Puerto Rican “immigrant-citizens” to fight against second-class citizenship and to secure a bilingual voice. In the process, Pantoja and the Puerto Rican community changed the character, complexion and tone of New York and the nation. Through passionate personal testimony, never-before-seen home movies, archival footage, and layered visual imagery, a feisty Antonia Pantoja guides us through the Puerto Rican community’s settlement and struggles.

As Long As I Remember: American Veteranos examines the personal toll and legacy of the Viet Nam war on three South Texas artists-featuring visual artists Juan Farias, author Michael Rodriguez and poet/performance artists Eduardo Garza. The stories of these men and their families take us through a journey of their lives, growing up in the Mexican American community, their military service in Vietnam, and their lives after the war. Through their stories, we examine the role art plays in the sorting of memories, PTSD, and activism and the current conflict in Iraq. The film will fill your senses with images of South Texas during the Viet Nam War and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement to the their present lives and the vibrant Chicano Art scene in San Antonio.

Beisbol is a three-part documentary series that will take an unprecedented look at the history of baseball from a new perspective: From Latin American “centrals” to the “house that Ruth built.” This is a documentary about 150 years of baseball fever as it developed south of the border and of history’s most celebrated Latino baseball players. But it’s not just a sports documentary.it’s a program that deeply examines the political and social transitions in Latin America as well as the experiences of Latinos in the United States through the metaphor of baseball.

Delirio Tropical is an experimental, one-hour narrative which takes place in Puerto Rico in the mid 1980s. It interweaves and layers the personal history of a twenty something Puerto Rican woman, Alicia, with sociopolitical events deriving from the most controversial political event in recent Puerto Rico history: the Cerro Maravilla assassinations.

There’s a postage stamp of urban sidewalk known by people of a certain age for having burned to the ground. A more recent generation knows it as the place where hip hop was born. An older generation remembers the time that this turf that produced a New York Latin music sound that came to be known as Salsa. This film tells a story about the creative life of the South Bronx, beginning with the Puerto Rican migration and the adoption of Cuban rhythms to create the New York salsa sound; continuing with the fires that destroyed the neighborhood but not the creative spirit of its people; chronicling the rise of hip hop from the ashes; and ending with reflections on the power of the neighborhood’s music to ensure the survival of several generations of its residents, and, in the process, take the world’s pop culture by storm.

Lalo Guerrero: The Original Chicano juxtaposes the life and career of the great Chicano troubadour with the history of the Mexican-American/Chicano. As a composer, musician, political satirist and performer, Lalo Guerrero has no equal. His career spanned seven decades, his music and lyrics capturing the major social and political events of the Chicano experience making him, as Linda Ronstadt describes, “the first great Chicano musical artist and the historian and social conscience of that community.” The program takes the viewer on a musical tour of Chicano/Mexican American history, with the ultimate guide: Lalo Guerrero. The story is told through Lalo’s own voice and the voices of many who consider him their mentor, including humorists Paul Rodriguez and Cheech Marin, musicians David Hidalgo and Louie Perez of Los Lobos, Linda Ronstadt and Ry Cooder, and activist Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farmworkers Union.

Beginning with the beguiling awkwardness of high-stakes band auditions, through annual events like the Mariachi Vargas Extravaganza in San Antonio, and up to prom, graduation and a summer quinceanera, Mariachi High captures a year in the life of top-ranked student musicians in “Mariachi Halcon,” the varsity-level championship ensemble at Zapata High School on the border of South Texas. The film follows the students as they move from school to stage in competitions that are fierce battlegrounds filled with the flash and fire of musical virtuosity and traje de charro dress, from intimate scenes with family at home to auctioning their hand raised cattle at the annual Zapata County Fair.

Our Disappeared/Nuestros Desaparecidos is a filmmaker’s personal search for the souls of friends who disappeared in Argentina during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. The principal narrator is the filmmaker himself, Juan Mandelbaum, who returns to trace the fate of five friends. The pain of their absence and the lack of justice for many of the perpetrators continue to haunt the country. Each story shows different aspects of the horrors that befell them. The film also focuses on these young people’s dreams for a better society before they were taken away, and on the legacies that live on through their now grown surviving children. They show that there is hope even after such an enormous tragedy.

Saint Patrick’s Parish has become a kind of social laboratory as a traditionally Irish-American institution changes to reflect the city that surrounds it. Scenes from a Parish raises questions about the nature of community – how the ideals of a faith community come up against pressures that place this ideal at risk. In this film, nine Catholics face obstacles – class, ethnicity and sexual orientation – that threaten to break apart the fellowship they seek.

Special Circumstances is a documentary about the devastating impact of U.S. foreign policy in Chile during the 1970s and the long-term human costs of state-sponsored violence. Through the story of one survivor, Héctor Salgado, audiences will come to understand the legal, political and social obstacles standing in the way of a nation’s attempt, thirty years later, to overcome its brutal history.

The Guestworker is the story of Candelario Gonzalez Moreno (Don Cande), a 66-year-old farm worker from Durango, Mexico. Having spent the last 40 years harvesting American crops, Don Cande is now enrolled in the U.S. Government’s H-2A Visa Program. While he has made the trip illegally many times before, the program ensures safe passage but offers no hope of citizenship and the benefits that go along with it. Filmed on both sides of the border, The Guestworker chronicles his life while looking at the program from contrasting perspectives. The film shows the pressure on the farmers to produce their crops and documents the struggle farm workers face to secure a future for their families back home in Mexico.

The genesis of The Road to Chulumani occurred during the filmmaker’s first visit to Bolivia, in 1997. During this visit, he made family connections and found literature that described his family’s involvement in the slave trade, as well as in the Chaco War during the 1930s. While American audiences have seen several views of the legacy of slavery in North America, how the process played out in Latin America is completely unknown. Likewise, regional conflicts, like the Chaco War, which had a profound impact on Latin American societies, are not well known or understood. The filmmaker will take viewers on a personal journey to search the past and discover his family’s history and how it has affected Bolivia.

When the Mountains Tremble – Redux tells the story of one man’s relentless struggle to close a cycle of violence. In 1983, Pamela Yates made a film titled “When the Mountains Tremble” about the social revolution in Guatemala, a struggle between the indigenous people of Guatemala and the brutal military dictatorship led by General Efrain Rios Montt. The General had targeted an outspoken young Guatemalan human rights lawyer, Frank LaRue, a hunted member of the opposition. Now, after 22 years, LaRue has returned from exile to Guatemala and is masterminding the prosecution of General Rios Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. This film will follow how the case is built and give voice to the survivors of the massacres and end with the indictment of General Rios Montt. It will also demonstrate the role of documentary film as evidence in a criminal investigation.

About Us

Latino Public Broadcasting is the leader of the development, production, acquisition and distribution of non-commercial educational and cultural media that is representative of Latino people, or addresses issues of particular interest to Latino Americans. These programs are produced for dissemination to the public broadcasting stations and other public telecommunication entities. LPB provides a voice to the diverse Latino community on public media throughout the United States.